//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 // Story: The Lyrist and The Tempest // by Valiant wind //------------------------------// “Still remember? The reconstruction and activation code. One will activate the Tempest from slumber, and one will resurrect it from destruction,” it was as if Grey Wind had been restored to the day when Lyra first met her, all emotions removed from her damp, monotone voice. It sent a freezing uneasiness down Lyra’s spine. “They are both here, on Equestria…” Lyra mumbled, “and some pony activated them after Princess Luna used that termination code.” “Your luck was ridiculous,” Grey Wind shook her head, “there must’ve been a time dilation between those codes. The portal must be closed when the activation code was used, or Equestria should long have become the second Main Haven. Those two codes should still be somewhere on this world. Question is…where and who…?” A long silence. Lyra didn’t know how to reply. How could she ever? “My work here is far from over,” Grey Wind was pacing back and forth anxiously, “The Gray Tempest will NOT be allowed to devour another world! I must find those codes and make sure no pony will use them ever again—” “But it’s unimportant now, isn’t it?” Lyra snapped, pouting her snout at Nightjar, “my magic is all around the portal! Equestria is safe now! You just said that!” “Right! Even if the Gray Tempest is activated again, no nanomachines can get through Lyra’s magic! They’ll be destroyed as soon as they arrive in our world!” Nightjar took the hint and quickly followed, “isn’t it, Grey?” Grey Wind’s wings jerked up and went stiff half-spread. She blinked a few times, staring at the portal. With a long sigh, she gently put them back down. “Yes…you are right. They can’t get through the portal,” she looked away in embarrassment, “Sorry.” “Relax, Grey. There is really no need to put the entire world on your shoulder,” Lyra said. “I will still go look for them once…all of this is finished,” Grey Wind glanced at the central screen, “There could be working portals in the other parts of the galaxy. I’ll have to make sure that the Gray Tempest will no longer harm a single soul.” “Then let us help you!” Lyra blurted. She was surprised at how naturally she let that sentence slip, that she was voluntarily taking up a responsibility that was never hers. It wasn’t like her at all, “I can convince Bon-Bon to let me out a few times, then we can go search for those codes together—and Nightjar can help too!” Nightjar opened her mouth, but her voice was covered by a loud beep. A red light was flickering on the interface below the central screen. “Done already?” Grey Wind raised an eyebrow. She went to the screen and tapped the interface on her arm. A larger blue screen popped up in front of her. A few red messages were rolling across it. She narrowed her eyes. “The tracking sequence was completed?” Lyra asked. Her heart was starting to speed. “I’m…not sure…” Grey Wind was swiping across the screen with both her wings, “when I ran the tracking program, a sub-section of the mainframe appeared to be activated. It is blocking the processing of the sequence—” Click! There was a soft sound like a raindrop shattering against the pavement. A socket had slid open beneath Grey Wind’s screen, where something metallic was reflecting the dark blue light of the lamps. Lyra clearly heard the turning of gears and bounce of a sling, while Grey Wind was standing right in front of it, too absorbed to notice. “Look out!” She grasped her with her magic and yanked her to the side. Grey Wind staggered and dropped to the floor while a disk-shaped object flew out of the mainframe and smashed into the wall behind them, bouncing off to the room’s corner. Lyra shuddered. It was a close one. That thing’s speed would have no difficulties in snapping a few of Grey’s ribs. “What the—” Grey Wind blinked, while her eyes cleared as soon as she saw the disk on the ground, “oh…Thank you, Lyra,” she bent down and went on to check the socket. “A DEFENSE SYSTEM?!” Nightjar yelped. She was nervously glancing all around, “we really ought to be more careful—” “No. Look,” Grey Wind beckoned them to the mainframe. One of her wings was turned into a wire and reached into the socket. She soon pulled it out, and there was a small piece of brown, withered metal caught on its end. Though barely holding together, Lyra could see that it was once a part of a piston. Among an entire room of high-tech that lasted thousands of years, it had never seemed so out of place, “the gears are all rusted. It was supposed to gently send it out.” Her brows knitted, “strange. Why would it even rust? This cannot be a work of my creators.” When Nightjar leaned forward for a closer look, Lyra paced to the corner of the room. She wrapped the disk in her magic and raised it to eye level. The metal disk was definitely old, almost completely covered by rust. The crash had shattered a part of its brown shell, the device’s original silver surface emitting a faint glow. She raised a hoof and peeled off a part of the rust, then she gasped. Her hoofs lost all their strength, and she nearly dropped to the ground. There was a single line of Equestrian carved on the front shell: To my daughter, Lyra Heartstrings “G—Grey…what is this…?” “Lyra? Be careful, that thing could be—” Grey Wind saw the carvings and went stiff as well. An intense green light flickered on her mane, and her lips trembled, “…my…I see…” she glanced at the stone box on the analyzer clutch, “the box itself is the key…how would any pony know…” “Answer me, Grey,” with a trembling hoof, Lyra laid the device onto the ground. Her hoof was slipping, and she could not afford to accidentally break it. “It’s a hologram projector. There’s a 3-D message stored within it,” Grey Wind turned her head away, “hold on, I’m running the scan.” “In the name of Luna, we found it!” Nightjar hopped over and screeched happily, “Lyra, this must be your mother’s clue! She knew you would find this place eventually!” “There must be an energy trigger attached to that analyzer. When your box is put into it, that projector will be released,” Grey Wind said, closing her eyes, “but even this would be a too advanced technology for you…I wonder how she made this thing?” Lyra remembered Warmhoof’s words: “She was the best crafter on all of Equestria”… she smiled, I shouldn’t be surprised at all… “How do we open it?” “It has a genetic lock,” Grey Wind said, smiling as well, “you need to press your hoof onto it—anywhere without the rust.” Lyra did as she was told. When her hoof made contact with the metal surface, a small screen jumped up in front of her. Biolink established. Beginning decryption. Then the words were replaced by a small progress bar. The loading itself was no longer than one minute, but in Lyra’s perspective, it was as if she’d lived the entirety of her sixteen years of life once again. Finally, the bar reached its end, and the screen shrank back into the projector. Four beams of green light shot out into the air, constructing an image that had only appeared in Lyra’s most wonderful dreams. A unicorn mare was smiling at her. Their mane and coat were almost identical. Nightjar, Grey Wind, Bon-Bon, Twilight, the Gray Tempest, the Xa’natars…everything lost their meanings at that very moment. The mare was all that Lyra could see, all that she could care about. With a shaky voice, she muttered out the words she’d waited an entire life to say: “Mo—mother?” She was not sure if it was just her imagination, but her mother’s smile was becoming more bitter. “My daughter, if you are seeing this…” her voice was as soft as a lullaby, “that means eventually you decided to seek the truth,” She put a hoof above her chest, “I know you are confused. I know you are angry, but please, at least allow me to tell you everything.” I am not angry, mom. I’m happy. So, so happy. “I…I’m sorry, my child,” Melody Heartstrings lowered her head, “I got myself involved in a horrible business…I’ve always been thinking…If I haven’t gone into the forest that day…if I haven’t discovered this place, things would have been…” “So she got through the disguise and even managed to tinker the mainframe’s system,” Grey Wind mumbled, “unbelievable.” “I could’ve walked away. I could have pretended that none of those had happened. But instead I…I…Oh, Celestia…” Melody was rubbing her eyes, “I don’t know what got to me first…those dreams or my curiosity…I awakened something that shouldn’t have even existed…I created a path for the Gray Tempest.” “What?” Nightjar clawed the floor, “she…paved a path for the Gray Tempest?” “It’s all coming together,” Grey Wind glanced at the jumpgate, “No wonder there’s an L-gate here. She must’ve recovered the building plan from my creators’ database.” “You are saying—” “I was wrong. That portal was not built by my creators,” Grey Wind flapped her wings, “it was built by Lyra’s mother.” “You can look up that name through the machine in this room. I installed a translation program,” Melody sighed heavily, “but long story short…I resurrected an evil that could devour our entire galaxy. I managed to take hold of their activation spell before anypony could use it, but my sin was irreversible.” “I was not the only one interested in The Tempest. There are other creatures around this place coveting its power…they succeeded a thousand years ago, using the nanomachines to turn Princess Luna into Nightmare Moon, and now they want to repeat their victory,” Melody gritted her teeth, “They do not know what they are tampering with. The Gray Tempest cannot be controlled by anyone. The only result of releasing it would be the destruction of our civilization. I will not allow that to happen.” “Your mother was a wise mare, Lyra,” Grey Wind wrapped her hoof around Lyra’s. “She was talking about that Nightmare Beast, right?” Nightjar asked, “all this time it wanted to bring back Nightmare Moon? But why would she want to hurt you? Revenge?” The hologram of Melody took a deep breath. “I cannot erase the spell. If I do that, the other two core codes would be lost as well, including the one that could permanently destroy the Gray Tempest. So I hid the activation spell away. To a place they’ll never find…” She raised her front hoof. It took Lyra a few seconds to realize that she was pointing directly at her. “You. My daughter. The technology of this place had allowed me to modify you even before you were born…” she laughed, “I incorporated the activation code into your genetic sequence. Within a certain part of your gene, there are a few bases that just happened to arrange into a certain code…the one that would activate the Gray Tempest. As long as you are living and safe, Lyra, it will never be recovered by anypony.” “By Luna!” Nightjar squeaked. “WHAT?!” Lyra screamed, “a part of my gene…is the activation code?!” “No wonder your magic could destroy the nanomachines…” Grey Wind was trying desperately to sound composed, “your magic may have reversed the property of that code…I had guessed it was because of some reasons, but I never expected…” she turned to Lyra, “that’s why that nightmare beast was hunting you. She wanted to reclaim the activation code through the genes in your body tissues.” “The dogs of Nightmare Moon…I knew they would come for you, so I had to send you away, to a place under the watch of the Princesses, where no nightmare would slip by,” Tears were welling up in Melody’s eyes as she did her best in putting up a beam, “my daughter…I know you’ll never forgive me for this…I did not fulfill my duty as a mother, but please at least listen to this: live. Live a long, happy, and healthy life, pass your gene to your foals and the foals of your foals…such that the fundamental codes will forever exist. We may not be able to destroy the Gray Tempest at present time, but at least give our offspring a chance…a chance to put an eternal end to this madness…” A waterfall of emotions surged to Lyra’s throat, bitterness, sweetness, sourness…Countless thoughts and feelings, forming an enormous sea of chaos. “Lyra, my daughter…the nightmares know of my actions. They’ll come for me,” she found herself looking straight into her mother’s eyes. They were blue, spotless and calm like a mid-day ocean, “my path will soon meet its end, but yours could stretch all across the living world. Promise me that you’ll forget this irresponsible mom and live on to be a wonderful mare of your own…I wish you the best of luck, my daughter…” Then the hologram dissipated. The screen popped up again, displaying a single line: Message complete. “Complete? How could it be complete?” Lyra shouted, “don’t go! You haven’t even told me where to find you—” A roar of machines came from across the room. Grey Wind rushed to the mainframe. “The tracking sequence is complete!” she exclaimed, “I can see where the owner of this box has been. Chronological order, from late to early: Memento, Ponyville, Canterlot, and…” her eyes widened, “…this room…?” BOOM! Dust was falling from the wall beside the portal. A large chunk of the metallic wall had suddenly fallen down. The three friends pounced over together and froze where they stood. The opening led to a much smaller side room. The walls and floor were all made with black metal, dimly lit by a single lamp block installed on the floor. Behind the lamp was a single granite tombstone, its edge reaching out like a pair of pure white wings. It bore two lines of words: Melody Heartstrings I’m sorry, my daughter. I love you.